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Articles from Sheryl Paul | Selfgrowth.com
- This is What Actually Goes on Behind Closed Doors - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2019 from Sheryl PaulOne of the most common questions I’m asked is, “How come other people don’t suffer in this way?” It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about relationship anxiety, friendship anxiety, social anxiety, or any other hook that anxiety hangs its hat on, when you’re the one suffering it feels like you’re ...
Views: 95 - A Roadmap to Break Free From Anxiety at Last - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2019 from Sheryl PaulWe spend at least fifteen years in school learning the skills that our culture has deemed essential for a certain type of success in the world. We learn how to read. We learn the basics of math. We learn how to write. If we’re lucky, there’s some art and theater thrown in, but it’s understood ...
Views: 33 - This is How to Overcome the Most Powerful Obstacle to Change - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2019 from Sheryl PaulWe all know that greens are healthy. We know that meditation can be life-changing. We know that breathwork is deeply healing and that yoga can be a pathway to profound change. We know that exercise is essential. We know that journaling is a powerful tool. We know it, but what stops us from ...
Views: 42 - The Most Powerful Medicine to Soothe a Rupture of Anxiety - by Submitted on Aug 08, 2019 from Sheryl PaulLife moves along in flows and eddies. The more you attend to your inner world and heal the long-standing and deep-seated pain and trauma that live at the root of intrusive thoughts, the longer the stretches of eddies and the time you’ll stand amongst the reeds, flowing with the small moments of ...
Views: 94 - Not attracted? Learn How to Unclog the Blocked Flow of Love - by Submitted on Aug 01, 2019 from Sheryl PaulOnce again, I turn to the poet and mystic Mark Nepo and The Book of Awakening for gems of wisdom about the stones that block our hearts from fully loving: “It seems this is the never-ending work of relationship, each of us in our own time and way moving the stones between us, repositioning ...
Views: 90(1 vote) - How to Harness the Hidden Sexy Ingredient of Marriage - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2019 from Sheryl PaulOur culture worships the gods of youth and eternal happiness. If we could bottle and merchandize the elixir of youth, most people in the Western world would purchase it no matter the price. We extol the blemish-and-wrinkle-free face and lay ourselves prostrate at the feet of the toned body. A ...
Views: 114 - How to Multiply Your Love and Attraction - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2019 from Sheryl PaulWhat would it be like to throw yourself full-bodied and without restraint into love’s arms, to set the fear voices and inherited scripts that say, “Love isn’t safe” on the fence of your mind and walk through the tattered gates of your heart that are still trying to keep you safe? What would ...
Views: 107 - This is How I Learned to Love My Husband Well - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2019 from Sheryl PaulIt took me many years to learn how to love my husband well, and, of course, I’m still learning. Like many people, I didn’t grow up witnessing a healthy model of true partnership. My parents, like all parents, did the best they could and they gave me many gifts, but I’m sure even they would ...
Views: 104 - Remedies for Eco-Anxiety and Absorbing the Pain of the World - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2019 from Sheryl PaulThe topic of world and eco-anxiety seems to make the rounds in my practice every few months, and last week was one of those times. Between longterm clients, new clients, and course members, the theme was flooding the room. I’d like to break it down for you using the principles of my work to see ...
Views: 75 - A Love Story is the Medicine for the Fear of Loss - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2019 from Sheryl PaulIt was one of those moments that I could have easily pushed aside and continued on through my evening wrapped in the spiderweb of distraction. It was a moment so small that I almost missed the worlds of beauty and pain that lived within it, like a monarch butterfly floating past and I, caught in ...
Views: 97 - This is Why You Struggle with Relationship Anxiety - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2019 from Sheryl Paul“Probably the next important evolution of Western humankind is to find a proper container for religious life so that we do not unrealistically expect another mortal human being to carry this high value. In short: don’t ask a human to be God for you.” * Robert Johnson, Balancing Heaven and ...
Views: 106 - How to Break Free from the Mental Addiction of Health Anxiety - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2019 from Sheryl PaulLike all forms of anxiety, health anxiety is on the rise. With information about our health more available than ever, the anxious mind that seeks control at all costs can easily latch onto health as a hotbed theme that invites this mind to shift into overdrive. You mean I can prevent ...
Views: 83 - Real Love is Available Love - by Submitted on May 27, 2019 from Sheryl PaulThe first part of this post appeared on Instagram this week. I’m expounding upon it here. Real love is available love. It’s not the chase. It’s not drama. It’s not longing. It’s not the kiss at the end of the movie or finally snagging the one who got away. Real love is here-and-now, human, ...
Views: 121 - “The Wisdom of Anxiety” is Coming Down the Birth Canal - by Submitted on May 17, 2019 from Sheryl PaulIn April 2015, I had a dream while on vacation in Los Angeles: Robert Johnson, the Jungian analyst who has informed so much of my work, came to me and said, “It’s time to write another book and it’s mostly written.” I woke up, faithfully wrote it down as I do with most of my dreams, then filed ...
Views: 193 - Intrusive Thought: “I Have to be Single In Order to Heal” - by Submitted on May 17, 2019 from Sheryl PaulIt’s a thought that arises frequently for those struggling with relationship anxiety: “I have to be single in order to heal.” Offshoots and extrapolations of this thought sound like: • “I have to backpack by myself across Europe.” • “I have to live in a loft in New York.” • “I haven’t ...
Views: 172 - This is What it Takes to Heal from Shame and Anxiety - by Submitted on May 17, 2019 from Sheryl PaulWhen I was in graduate school twenty-five years ago, we learned many essential principles and tools for becoming a skilled healer in the counseling arts. We thoroughly covered various modalities, including the depth psychological perspective that informs all of my work, and spent countless hours ...
Views: 152 - A Lifeline of Hope in the Swamp of Relationship Anxiety - by Submitted on May 17, 2019 from Sheryl PaulA coaching client recently wrote to me to share the following (shared with permission): Each time of the three times I spoke to you, you told me something that has been a huge lifeline for me: “If two people are willing to make it work, they can make it work.” You mentioned this to me three ...
Views: 146 - Self-Trust, Red Flags and Relationship Anxiety - by Submitted on Apr 11, 2019 from Sheryl PaulJust as there are no rules for life, there are no rules for relationships. That statement can be triggering for the ego, the part of us that insatiably demands definite answers and craves formulas. “Tell me how to live and how to love and then I’ll know that I’ll be okay!” the ego thinks, then ...
Views: 220 - A Remedy When You Don’t Know Who You Are - by Submitted on Apr 11, 2019 from Sheryl PaulOur culture entrains us not to know who we are. From the time we’re born and continuing into our early years, we’re conditioned to externalize our sense of self through being told when and how to eat, sleep, play, socialize, learn. Although this may be changing, the dominant child-raising ...
Views: 643 - Would You Like To Know Why Real Love Is So Scary - by Submitted on Mar 02, 2019 from Sheryl Paul“We are all made up of yearning and light, searching for a way out, afraid we will be shut in or cut off or repelled back into the ground from which we are reaching. This is enough to begin: To know, before all the names and histories drape who we are, that we want to be held and left alone, ...
Views: 221 - How Marie Kondo can Help You Fall in Love With Your Partner - by Submitted on Feb 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulAnxious people aren’t typically the most easy-going people on the planet. Because our high sensitivity wires us for hypervigilance, which then causes us to scan the horizon for danger, we’re physiologically primed to have a more tightly-wound nervous system. Unless you received guidance as a ...
Views: 237 - How One Lightbulb Moment Can Ease Your Anxiety - by Submitted on Feb 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulIn every session with clients, I drop down into the core of myself, breathing and opening into the vessel of being so that I can listen with the ears we do not see, the ones that hear underneath the top layers stories into the invisible layers where the gem that needs to be revealed rises gently ...
Views: 180 - One of the Anxious Statements I Hear Every Week - by Submitted on Feb 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulOne of the blessings of listening to the inner worlds of my global audience is that I hear about the thoughts, feelings, questions, and stories that are archetypal to all human beings. I’ve written extensively about the various intrusive thoughts that enter my virtual office, but there are other ...
Views: 277 - The Two Most Important Qualities You Need in a Partner - by Submitted on Jan 24, 2019 from Sheryl PaulAs evidenced by our high divorce rate and, even more disheartening, how few long-term marriages are thriving and fulfilling, it’s clear that our culture has it all wrong when it comes to love. Not only do we project our gold and gods onto our partners instead of taking responsibility for our own ...
Views: 268 - One of the Most Powerful Questions to Cut Through Anxiety (Relationships, Health, Parenting, Friendship) - by Submitted on Jan 24, 2019 from Sheryl PaulWhen addressing anxiety effectively, we must attend to all four realms of self: physical, emotional, cognitive, and soul – or body, heart, mind, and soul. Attending only to one of the four realms is helpful, but it won’t help you heal anxiety from the root. By “attend” I mean we need tools to ...
Views: 280 - A Roadmap for How to Reclaim Your Magnificent Body - by Submitted on Jan 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulSacred Sexuality isn’t only about sexuality; it’s about our relationship to our bodies, our creativity and our aliveness. When we learn to rinse away shame layers so that we can inhabit and appreciate the bodies we’re in (instead of the one we’re conditioned to believe we’re supposed to be in ), ...
Views: 226 - The Intersection of Sex and Relationship Anxiety - by Submitted on Jan 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulIf you’re familiar with relationship anxiety, you know that it doesn’t take much for a flyaway thought to send you into a tailspin of anxiety that then leads you to question if you’re with the right person. This thought could be, “I’m not feeling in love” or “My partner always irritates me” or ...
Views: 301 - A Brave Explosion of the Myth of Desire - by Submitted on Jan 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulAs always when I run my Sacred Sexuality course, I was blown away by the vulnerability and honesty on the forum on this last round. Where else do we share our deepest, darkest thoughts and feelings around sexuality, the ones we think we’re the only ones having, the ones that cause shame to ...
Views: 199 - There's Something Broken But It's Not You - by Submitted on Jan 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulI spend a lot of time thinking about our culture, and it’s a topic I bring up almost every week in my blog and courses in some form. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how terribly sad and actually tragic it is that culture should support its members into becoming more of who they are, but we, in ...
Views: 224 - Explode the #1 Block to Healing from Anxiety (Relationship and Otherwise) - by Submitted on Dec 13, 2018 from Sheryl PaulA few weeks ago, as I was cleaning out our closet, I stumbled upon a stack of papers from my grandmother. Most of the papers were familiar, but one unfamiliar packet literally dropped onto my lap, a stapled report for an adult-education class in psychology that she took in 1963 that I had never ...
Views: 301 - How to Shatter the Myths that Are Keeping You Stuck - by Submitted on Dec 13, 2018 from Sheryl PaulA great deal of my work centers around shattering myths about love, romance, and intimacy that cause untold amounts of anxiety in relationships and sexuality. If we start with the very basic “doubt means don’t” slogan that permeates the culture of romantic love, we see immediately what happens ...
Views: 482 - Am I the Only One Struggling with Anxiety? - by Submitted on Nov 29, 2018 from Sheryl PaulPeople often ask me why they’re struggling with relationship anxiety or social anxiety or any other kind of anxiety when other people seem to glide through life more effortlessly. The subtext embedded in the question is, “Is there something wrong with me?” or “Why am I being singled out or ...
Views: 345 - The Poetry of Loss - by Submitted on Nov 11, 2018 from Sheryl PaulMy son and I are driving into town for our weekly Friday morning special time and Suzanne Vega’s song “The World Before Columbus” comes on. It’s a song she wrote for her daughter that I used to sing to Everest when he was a baby, and these lyrics made me cry every time: Those men who lust for ...
Views: 273 - The Fear of Getting Old - by Submitted on Nov 11, 2018 from Sheryl PaulWe live in an ageist culture. It’s not only that we’re terrified of death and hurry to sequester the topic away under the nearest rock or stuff it into the closest corner; it’s that, in a culture that reveres youth, beauty, and physical perfection, we fear aging itself. We fear the lines that ...
Views: 349 - The Best Piece of Advice I Can Give You to Reduce Your Anxiety - by Submitted on Nov 07, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOur era has been called the Information Age, the Technology Age, and the Digital Age. But it could also easily be called The Age of Anxiety, for anxiety is rampant and can manifest in so many ways: social anxiety, test anxiety, work anxiety, relationship anxiety, sleep anxiety, fertility anxiety ...
Views: 416 - “My Partner Isn’t Smart Enough” - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2018 from Sheryl Paul“One of the big traps we have in the West is our intelligence, because we want to know what we know. Freedom allows you to be wise, but you cannot know wisdom. You must be wisdom… The intellect is a beautiful servant, but a terrible master. Intellect is the power tool of our separateness. The ...
Views: 326 - The Art of Patient Loving - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2018 from Sheryl PaulPerhaps the area of our lives to suffer most from the increasingly fast pace of the culture is love, for the expectation of immediate results naturally leads to a belief that love should not only be easy, but that when there’s a problem, it should be remediated quickly. Love doesn’t work this ...
Views: 335 - The Truth About Love (and my thoughts on Instagram) - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2018 from Sheryl Paul“Love is one of the great enlargers of the person because it requires us to ‘take in’ the stranger and to understand him, and to exercise restraint and tolerance as well as imagination to make the relationship work.” – May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude I recently decided to join Instagram. ...
Views: 330 - You Can't Stop the Waves but You Can Learn to Surf - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2018 from Sheryl PaulAt the core of anxiety – whether health anxiety, death anxiety, relationship anxiety, or generalized anxiety – is the need for safety. As I’ve been writing about in my last few posts, left to our own unguided minds, the ego will latch onto our stories to try to gain a foothold into the ...
Views: 450 - The Scars of First Heartbreak - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2018 from Sheryl PaulThere’s nothing like the first. The first family. The first friend. The first kiss. The first job. The first baby. The first heartbreak. The first time or experience or relationship lays the groove of a blueprint for how we navigate later, similar experiences. Our first experience of a family ...
Views: 255 - What is the Work of Breaking Free from Relationship Anxiety? - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2018 from Sheryl PaulA coaching client recently said to me, “You talk a lot about doing “the work”, and I wondered for so long what “the work” was. I thought that if I understood anxiety intellectually I would feel better. And the first time I went through the course I did feel better for a while, which I know is ...
Views: 316 - The Day My Son Flew Into The Sky - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2018 from Sheryl PaulHe had been waiting for this since he was two years old. For as far back as we can remember, Everest has wanted to fly. Many young kids, especially boys, have a penchant for things that go – trucks, cars, trains, boats – but for Everest it was more than a stage; it was a calling. He wasn’t ...
Views: 314 - Heartbroken Not Broken - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2018 from Sheryl PaulShame is often a placeholder for powerlessness and a protector against grief. Instead of feeling the rawness of grief, the mind latches onto a shame story that says, “I’m broken.” Instead of surrendering to the powerlessness of painful situations that had nothing to do with you, like your ...
Views: 248 - Flags Versus Red Flags - by Submitted on Oct 17, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOne of the most common questions I’m asked during a coaching session is, “What are red flags? You say that if I’m suffering from relationship anxiety and I’m in a healthy and secure relationship without red flags then the anxiety is a manifestation of pain that needs attention as opposed to ...
Views: 277 - The Gift of Projection - by Submitted on Oct 17, 2018 from Sheryl PaulProjection is one of the most important concepts to understand when you’re stuck in relationship anxiety or any manifestation of anxiety. It’s a psychological term that essentially means we’re stuck in a story about someone or something else with the belief that it’s true, and that if the person ...
Views: 294 - What You Choose Determines What Comes Next - by Submitted on Oct 17, 2018 from Sheryl PaulTransitions, as breaking and renewal points, offer choice-points that determine how we unfold into the next stage of our lives. Many people find me during their wedding transition when when they’re broken open not only by relationship anxiety but also by the earthquake of feelings that erupt ...
Views: 364 - Loneliness and Love - by Submitted on Oct 17, 2018 from Sheryl PaulThere’s a fundamental loneliness that is part of the fabric of being human. It arrives in the corners of night, when shadows form from curtain folds and the backs of chairs. It seeps in just before twilight, when afternoon exhales its last breath and evening hasn’t yet inhaled. It lives on the ...
Views: 323 - At the Heart of Anxiety - by Submitted on Oct 17, 2018 from Sheryl Paul“The final stage of healing is using what happens to you to help other people. That is healing in itself.” – Gloria Steinem “Why me?” people often ask when they’re dragged into the underworld of anxiety in any form. “Why do they have it so easy? Why does it look like everyone else glides ...
Views: 382 - The Art of Making Decisions - by Submitted on Oct 04, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOur culture fails to teach us the essential skills we need to navigate through life successfully in so many ways. As I discuss often on this site, it fails to teach us about healthy, real love. It fails to teach us about how to feel our feelings and work with our thoughts. It fails to guide us ...
Views: 319 - Caring What Other People Think - by Submitted on Oct 04, 2018 from Sheryl PaulHow would your life be different if you didn’t care what other people thought? How might your relationship, your job, and your day-to-day functioning be different if you weren’t weighed down by others’ opinions? How might you peel and crack out of the shells of your insecurity and arrive more ...
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